Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday kicked off a national bus tour focused on reproductive rights with a stop in Palm Beach, where they assailed former President Donald Trump just days after he came out against a proposed ballot measure in Florida that would enshrine protections for abortion rights in the state constitution.
Arriving in a blue bus emblazoned with the phrase “fighting for reproductive freedom,” several surrogates of Harris’ presidential campaign — including Florida Democrats like U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and U.S. Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, as well as national allies like U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison — took turns hammering Trump as a hypocrite who flip-flopped on his position on abortion rights.
“You can’t trust a damn word out of that liar’s mouth, no matter what he says,” said Wasserman Schultz, who represents a Broward County congressional district that stretches from Hollywood to Weston. “Florida is ground zero for his extreme, anti-reproductive freedom agenda, and he wants to keep it that way.”
Ana Navarro, a Republican co-host of ABC’s “The View” and a longtime Trump critic, said that the former president “has had more positions on reproductive rights than he has wives” and argued that he bears ultimate responsibility for a bevy of abortion restrictions in various states.
“Does Donald Trump think we’re stupid? Does he think we don’t remember?” Navarro said. “Listen, you don’t get to create a problem and then pretend you have the solution.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign fired back at the attacks on Tuesday, saying in a statement that “Florida is TRUMP country” and arguing that Harris’ campaign was wasting its time and money with the reproductive rights bus tour.
“Republican policies are what turned Florida red, and why it will continue to be a place Americans flock to for freedom,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary. “That’s why Floridians will overwhelmingly vote for President Trump on November 5th.”
The presidential race in Florida has been a sleepier affair this year than in past election cycles as Republicans have strengthened their foothold in the state and the campaigns have shifted their focus to battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
But the Harris campaign’s bus tour launch in South Florida was still a significant maneuver for the vice president, happening on Trump’s home turf, not far from his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The tour is slated to head to Jacksonville on Wednesday and will make “at least 50 stops in key states through the fall,” according to Harris’ campaign.
Democrats argue that a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would safeguard abortion access up to the point of fetal viability or when determined necessary to protect the patient’s health could provide a boost to their candidates in November.
Trump, a Florida resident who for months has refused to give a direct answer on whether he supports that ballot measure, Amendment 4, said in an interview on Friday with Fox News that he will vote against it in November, calling the proposed protections for abortion rights “radical.”
That comment came just a day after Trump said that his vote in November would reflect that Florida “needs more than six weeks” of pregnancy to allow women to have abortions.
Recent polling has shown broad support for Amendment 4, with one survey from USA Today and Suffolk University released last month finding that 58% of Florida voters would back the proposal, which would effectively overturn a six-week abortion ban in Florida that went into effect earlier this year.
The proposed amendment will need at least 60% of the vote in November to pass.
Trump’s newly declared opposition to the proposed amendment provided new fodder for Harris’ allies on Tuesday.
Anya Cook, a Florida resident who spoke last month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, told Harris’ supporters in Palm Beach how, in 2022, she was denied care at an emergency room after she experienced life-threatening pregnancy complications. She placed the blame for her experience on Florida’s abortion restrictions and Trump, who has taken credit for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“He is ‘proudly the person responsible’ for what I and so many women across the country have gone through,” Cook, who is from Coral Springs, said, quoting Trump’s past comments on appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Speaking to a cheering crowd in Palm Beach on Tuesday, Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, insisted that Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, “are running to drag us backward” but added that the former president’s position on abortion rights had galvanized his political opposition.
“By launching this bus tour, we are reminding Trump of the fact that by pulling our reproductive freedom and putting it on the ballot, he is going to have an incredible amount of energy and organizing that he is going to have to contend with,” she said. “So for the next 63 days … we are sharing this message with voters.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2024bet168, 1:17 PM.